Swastikas Surface in Turin

May 3, 1989

ROME (May. 2)

Teen-age gangs who deface walls with swastikas and slogans extolling racism are a growing problem in Turin, an industrial city in northern Italy with an important Jewish community and many immigrants from Third World countries.

The youths also vandalize property, attack passersby and fight among themselves.

But according to sociologist Franco Garelli, interviewed in the Turin newspaper La Stampa, intolerance against minorities, whoever they are, is “the most dangerous sign of the new violence.”

The racist graffiti are directed against Jews and immigrants. Typical are such slogans as “Racism is the most noble of sentiments.”